"She's going to kill you anyway, you twit. What do you think – she's going to walk off and leave you around to spill the beans? Did she tell you what she did to Wim Hoover? She put a bullet right behind his ear. You're dog meat. You don't stand a chance/'

Lily paled. A sob broke the surface like a bubble of air from the bottom of a pond, and then she seemed to collect herself. She closed her eyes and shook her head, like a prisoner faced with the rack. She didn't care what I did to her, she was not going to talk.

"God damn it! Tell me what's going on!"

Her expression hardened and I got a sudden glimpse of what she must have been like as a kid. Leonard's sister knew how to deal with bullies like me. She became stubborn, passive, a defensive stance she'd apparently perfected over the years as a way of warding off attack. She simply withdrew, pulling in on herself like a mollusk. She must have been threatened routinely as a child with everything from tetanus shots if she didn't wash her hands every time she peed, to police arrest if she didn't look both ways before she crossed the street. Instead of learning the rules, she'd learned to disappear.

To my amazement, she crossed to one of the turquoise chairs and sat down without another word. She picked up the remote control and flicked the television on, moving through six channels until she found a sitcom she liked. She was going to tune me out. I went over to the chair and hunkered beside her, talking earnestly while she kept her face to the screen. She watched intently as a buxom platinum blonde in a tank top proceeded to put together a birthday cake.

"Mrs. Howe, I'm not sure you understand what's going on here. Your sister-in-law has killed two people and no one seems to be aware of it but us."

Flour puffed up in a big cloud, obscuring the blonde's baby face. Befuddled, she'd apparently used baking powder and yeast, causing the dry flour to explode. The laugh track was cranked up to "hilarious." Oh that gal! Wasn't she a screech! Lily smiled faintly, reminded perhaps of baking disasters of her own.

I touched her arm. "We're running out of time, Lil, because know what? I think Marty Grice is going to double back and kill us too. She'll have to."

No response. Maybe what I said had no more reality for her than this bimbo with the birthday cake. She was cracking eggs now, getting splatted in the face with yolks. Simple laws of nature were being violated here and she was the butt of the joke. In walked the husband. His mouth fell open at the mess she'd made. New paroxysms of laughter erupted. I wondered if anything in the real world had ever struck me with such force.